Brahmanism today- part 1

I have inferred that excessive display of patriotism, religious beliefs, castiesm, racism and even excessive feelings of familial or individual superiority, belong to the same umbrella of beliefs where the believer and the group they belong to, identify themselves to be inherently superior in some way, to another individual or group threatening their belief; and thus finds a need to display or prove the superiority of their own belief.

Such people would stick on to the common defining identity, however irrelevant it might be today, neither trying to understand the historical context that might have made the identity relevant in the past, nor listening to any reason as to why these beliefs maybe irrelevant today. They would cling on to the identity of the past, and try to extrapolate the identity and its relevance to today's context, with half-baked reasoning. When they are cornered, caught with pursuing a hypocritical argument, they would justify the pseudo-scientific reasoning, by saying science can't explain everything!

Well, the problem is not the pseudo-scientific reasoning. That doesn't bother me. What bothers me is once again the bigotry of first attempting a rational argument, and when that is found to be unsustainable, to deflect entirely with an unfair argument such as - it has been done this way in the past or science can’t explain everything or that look at where science has taken us!

Now, who are the pseudo-believers? Let me put this in a concrete and more immediate context of Brahmanism. Brahmins today who cling on to their identity, citing how beautiful and useful their belief is in modern day context. What is the identity they talk about? Is it the culture, the symbols or the meaning behind the symbols? Which of these things is relevant today?

In a historical context, when life had fewer (arguably) complexities, and what mattered to an individual was whether he/she and his/her family had food, shelter, clothing, fair governance and security. Then, the kings with the help of their counselors and their gods were obliged to protect their kingdom and countrymen. The counselors were well-versed in the scriptures of their time and were simple people with only divine interests and ideally no interest in power and money. Their source of food, shelter was through the respect they commanded from the people for their wisdom (philosophical), lack of greed, and proximity to the divine. There were another group of people who were merchants, who would buy and sell clothing or spices, who would have their business within their kingdom or outside with other kingdoms. And there were another group that were skilled labourers, did odd jobs and were poor and possibly respected the least.

This system, now labeled the caste system, worked during its time for the following reasons. The children inherited their parents' profession. The system was well-organised giving the children the security of their parent's skill and reputation. The parents were happy. The children could be trained to do their work from childhood, and serve the society in the best way possible. But there was little room for individuality. People in general were contended with the system, possibly with a few exceptions for certainly, there should have been many a deviant individuals and groups. Children born into sculpture family would want to take on positions of power, the divine men might have been interested in power, being close to the kings. But life moved on and the system provided some stability and was generally accepted.

And yes, exploitation is one facet of any system of division of classes. Exploitation is directly proportional to the power-gradiance between the different classes and the binding factor within each class.

Today, in India, we have the upper, middle and lower classes, revolving primarily on the money one possesses. The fact that the class system has changed from being one based on familial profession to individual possessions and how good or bad this change is, maybe a topic for many an academic debate.

However, the irrelevance of the caste system today in the true meaning that it held in the past is doubtless. Profession has no part to play today in the determination of a person's caste today. It is now based on lineage! The Kshatriyas do not rule the kingdom. We now are supposed to be a democracy! So we are all the rulers of the nation and hence the kshatriyas! ;) The Vaishyas are not the only businessmen today. We are all simultaneously businessmen in our interest to make money! The idea of the Shudras or anybody else doing solely what their parents do, should not exist. And what of the Brahmins?

The Brahmins today are not well-versed in the divine texts. Why? That doesn’t bring home any MONEY silly! Brahmins today love to reinterpret the notion as being well-versed in any text ;) and use the word "scholarly" to describe and hence unite Brahmins of the past and present. It is of course doubtful if Brahmins in general, in the past and the present are "scholarly". I for one strongly disagree.

Living on others' food or money is impossible today, so lets not remind the Brahmins of an identity they would rather not be reminded about - no greed for power, money; not crossing the seas; leading simple lives; thriving on the respect others' have for a Brahmin!

So what we have left of Brahmins is this. Notions of being scholarly, probably even a belief of being genetically superior. Selected rituals, practices and symbols based on convenience. Listed below, are some of them.

1. A long, tiring, annoying, expensive and WASTEFUL ritual such as the tying of the sacred thread on the male child, whether on not the father or son engage in the practice now or in the future.

2. Another longer, tiring, annoying, expensive and WASTEFUL ritual, expenses borne entirely by the girl’s family – the Brahmin wedding, amidst family reunions, fun, family feuds, a thick film of smoke, the girl does nothing and the boy recites mantras in a language he barely understands, which involves praying for male children!

3. The valaikapu ceremony, a function for pregnant woman, much like a baby-shower-only worse!

4. Mandatory buying of an expensive silk saree of 9 yards, and putting it on ONLY during meaningless ceremonies, just like a fancy dress.

5. Jewellery and vessel buying for the daughter. This is in common words called the dowry. What the girl’s parents give their girl when she “leaves” her home into her husband’s home! And the amount of stuff the girl’s parents give was used to form a pecking order in the household- the more a daughter-in-law receives, the more power she welds!

6. A satvic diet. Today, conveniently, garlic, onion, murungakkai, (non-satvic) are considered acceptable under the label of being vegetarian!!
7. Reinterpreting meaning and immersing all of these symbolisms, in a tonic of importance and nobility,

So listed below are the Brahmin reinterpretations of some of the above points mentioned in detail.

Argument for practicing 1-The poonal ceremony. That it builds discipline, rigour, focus and peace of mind. Some people can go upto saying that the practice makes Brahmins intelligent. It makes them non-violent. It is the sole reason why Brahmins are superior to others (which in itself is contenstible).

Argument for practicing 2- The wasteful marriage ritual - "It has so much meaning" is the best I've got so far! And that "Woman are so important in the Hindu religion as rituals cannot be performed without a woman. Even Rama had to make a golden statue of seethai before he could begin his ashvamedha yagna". What they fail to mention, either in their ignorance of the vedas or on purpose is that seethai was banished from the kingdom by Rama to appease the people of Ayodhya and their wavering mouths. Also fail to mention that if seethai was around, as the first and only wife of King Rama, the Ashvamedha yagna involves her performing rituals on the horse, sleeping beside the dead horse under a blanket and copulating with it! I wish I could educate  the sweet  man who wanted to tell me about how empowered hindu women with Rama's ashvamedha sacrifice as an example, with all that I know now about the Hindu religion, sacrifices and specifically the ashamedha yagna from the Yajurva veda.

And I am not being sarcastic when I say that, there is some meaning in all of this. Just that not one propagator of the Hindu dharma I know, really knows ANYTHING about the original myth, belief, ritual and its purpose and about its irrelevance today.  They would go any length to pretend that they know-it-all, are enlightened beings, when one can see distrust, misery, selfishness, judgements and greed draining about their faces instead of peace. Worse still that they try to convince others and force them to believe the same.

Symbol 3- The vailkapu. It was orignally done in the third month of a woman's first pregnancy. It was originally about praying for a first-born son who will light the funeral pyres of his parents. This is precisely why it is done only for the first pregnancy and during the third month when the sex of the baby was believed to be determined. It is then that the sex of the baby was possibly known to be influenced by inhaling (through nose) a hormone- a juice from some plant! Today the function is about praying for the successful pregnancy of the pregnant daughter.  Yet all the irrelevant and offensive symbols of the past remain.

Symbol 4- the 9-yard silk saree. It is a convenience. It was meant to be worn by a married woman until her husband died. Now it is about convenience. It is worn when convenient. When is it convenient to wear that unwieldy thing? It certainly needs to be displayed on ALL major social occasions. It is just a SYMBOL and plays its part well. It screams Brahmin.  And the men think their woman look pretty and traditional in such attires and like it a lot. Sometimes, I wonder if this stems from some Freudian desire, or of it is about a man's simplistic, wishful dream that his wife should suddenly transform into the traditional, demure woman who finds sole and complete satisfaction in fulfilling her husband's gastronomical and sexual needs. Lets not even discuss why this is irrelevant today.

Argument for 5: The dowry look-alike. The argument for which is- “So little gold in the wedding? What will others say”. This is the argument that comes in after all arguments "parents like doing it for their girl children" have been countered in general.

Symbol 6. Satvic diet. This is put on a backseat as garlic/onion/murungakkai are vegetarian and "good for health" but other non-vegetarian items are cholesterol-ridden! Suddenly an argument that originated in the satvic properties of food, turns into a health argument or an animal rights argument.

7- In finding new meanings to practices, people still cling on to past symbols. They do not see the irrelevance of the symbol and claim that the symbols have an inherent meaning that only they can see; or that even if they can't see it, its existence can’t be denied! When they give it meaning, they talk about specific good that these practices do.

They are absolutely unwilling to substitute the symbol with other, relevant methods that achieve the same end.

Brahmanism today- part 2

What I am rather selfishly interested in, is to answer the question of why the remnants of the earlier class divide based on caste still prevails when it is rather irrelevant today and perhaps even of a disadvantage to Brahmins.

1. Political reinterpretation of the meaning of each caste and hence power. Power has logically shifted to the lower castes. They are an easy target, once-exploited, uneducated, miserable, tightly-knit, are in large numbers and thus constitute an easy vote bank. People in power have (always) had selfish interests in such divisions. Notwithstanding the creamy layer, lower castes now are supposed to be enjoying or may have begun to enjoy privileges previously denied to them.

Quite understandably, the upper caste now thinks it is being unfairly denied rightful chance to power, riches. Contradictory to the ancient Brahmin identity, even the very Brahmins who talk about their identity with pride, want a fair chance to POWER and RICHES! ;)

2. The upper castes, henceforth generalised as Brahmins, have no motivating need or reason to give up their position of power or superiority. If being Brahmins symbolically means wearing the scared thread, different clothes, cooking a certain kind of food, speaking a different language, performing different rituals, they would rather keep that identity than to give it up, even if it makes them appear castiest in their society. Why would they make a choice that apparently might put them at a disadvantage.

But the symbols are so ancient, deep-rooted and powerful, that even in their irrelevance today, they can still wield some psychological advantage. Brahmins now like to reinterpret the notions of Brahmanism to mean among other things that they are scholarly, intellectual! That this quality is probably now in their genes!

Well, it is not just the Brahmins who believe in their superiority, the insecurity of the lower castes is now so deep, even they suspect that Brahmins maybe inherently intellectual and brilliant and hence have an unfair advantage even in the new social order!

The validity of this argument need not be discussed time and again. To put things into perspective, eugenics was a field that intended to divide the society into classes based on genetic superiority levels. Hitler embraced this field and believed the Aryans to be genetically superior and the Jews inferior, and wanted them eliminated along with other disabled and useless people in the society. The argument has been proved incorrect a number of times since. The subject remains controversial.

In the same way as Hitler, Brahmins can choose to believe that there are relatively fewer uneducated Brahmins and more scholarly Brahmins today than other castes, because of nature(genetics) or nurture(environment people were brought up in). The latter is more believable, the former is still a theory that has been dubiously claimed, but disproved plenty of times. It is still waiting to be conclusively proved, yet it is what pseudo-scientific Brahmins swear by.

3. The upper caste, with their new-found insecurity has another strong reason to bind themselves together with an identity to fight injustices done to them.

Understandably enough, Brahmins will go on playing out the game the way they best can. If they have an advantage in any way over other communities, even if only psychologically, they would only be too happy to play on that!

So why give up on the symbolisms of being a Brahmin!

In a world of changing power orders, Brahmins would stick by any identity/belief, and even encourage it, just to cling on to an excuse to claim superiority, however irrelevant the identity is today. Interestingly, I’ve noticed only the most insecure of the Brahmins vigourously display their belief and propagate it to the younger generation. The already powerful ones, wear their Brahmin identity more discreetly and display it only when needed. And all Brahmins, play to rules by convenience. There is no exception to that, because the very rules have already been rewritten to meet the needs of the changing times. And there IS no single rule to bind them all.

There are even Brahmins, who don’t play by symbols at all! They may drink, eat meat, live luxurious lives, phoo-phoo the ceremonies and laugh at their irrelevance, in various combinations.

There are some who go all the way, putting in effort to academically understand the original meaning of symbols and to redefine and find personal meaning in the rituals they perform.

Everyone has the right to choose what their symbols are, conveniences are and to choose to follow what they want to. I personally respect people of group 2 and 3 and even those of group 1 who wear their Brahmin identity with pride. I cannot respect pretentious hypocrites, especially when they pretend to be more moral than others when any child can see through that guise.

Another interesting observation I made in the context of foregoing wedding rituals in my recent conversations are that –men who didn’t want to observe wasteful rituals, who made their opinion clear and loud, would voice their opinion and they could get away with it their way in the end. They would even, in the short course of time, be projected to be very noble, different, brave and even intelligent(!) to have fought all the way to give up on these material ceremonies. Their parents begin to boast about their boy, as will his in-laws! But if a girl even merely voiced such an opinion and refuse participation, she would hurt a thousand people and also be labelled stubborn, difficult and a witch for life. Which is precisely the reason why such women simply choose to marry men with similar (non)beliefs because life is so much simpler that way. I have not heard of an instance where, the woman has not wanted a ceremony and the man has been agnostic and the woman has followed her belief.